


so near to home and yet so far

by SerenePanic



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura and Lance are Siblings, Altean Lance (Voltron), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 11:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10306736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenePanic/pseuds/SerenePanic
Summary: Lance woke up on Earth five years ago, when a three year old got lost and accidentally deactivated his cryopod. He adapted.Now, he's standing in a place he used to call home, and it feels like ghosts are everywhere.





	

If he’s gonna be honest, Lance is in a state of pseudo-shock, right now.

Everything in the past hour has just happened…so quickly, and now he’s standing outside his once-home, too scared to go inside.

He had finally gotten almost… _used_ to Earth, after waking up five years ago, when a curious three year old had gotten lost and found the cryopod he’d been sleeping in for _who even knows how long, his shuttle is long destroyed it’s a miracle he’s still alive_ and woken him up. The little one’s family had taken him in and he’d adjusted (slowly, painfully, learning to call them _Mama_ and _Papa_ and _sisters_ and _brothers_ and not think about his mother, long dead, or his father, cruelly murdered and betrayed by the one who had once been his closest friend, or his sister, kind and beautiful and brilliant as a star and _too young to die_ ) and he had finally, finally accepted he would never go home, and even if he could leave Earth and go to the stars he would be far, far away from anything he’d ever known to be true—

He's standing on the doorstep to the Castle of Lions, and he wants to cry.

The past day has been a blur—breaking Shiro out of the Garrison containment tent, finding the Blue Lion in the desert (Blue was here, Blue was calling out to him in a way he’d never heard before), learning the Galra were still here, rocketing past the edge of Earth’s solar system, through the wormhole he’s called up in a moment of sheer desperation— _home._

Blue brought him _home_.

They’re going inside, and Lance is trailing after the others—Shiro, forcing himself to be confident in a new situation; Keith, afraid to get too far from his brother; Pidge, stubborn and afraid and _so young_ ; Hunk, anxiety-riddled and terrified, but always looking back at Lance to make sure he’s still there, still with them—he’s so afraid. The floor is dusty—automatically maintained by the Castle bots, but clearly on an energy-saving version that’s led to dust in the corners, too faint to notice unless you were intimately familiar with the way it’s Supposed to Be.

Lance’s chest aches, in a way he hasn’t felt since he first realized everyone at home was gone, that he’d been asleep long enough for an entire civilization to grow up around his cryopod, buried deep underground. He’s standing in his home, walking down halls he knows like the back of his hand, moving as if it’s against a current—

He’s terrified of what they’ll find.

All too soon, they’ve arrived in the cryostasis room—Lance isn’t sure why they came _here_ , but he doesn’t have enough air in his lungs to protest.

The Castle scans them and in the letters in the air— _Lance hasn’t read Altean in so long he’s missed it_ —the Castle identifies him as _Prince_ and the others as _Allies_ and the cryopods active and out into Shiro’s arms tumble _Allura_ and behind her, Coran stumbles out but _Allura she’s here she’s alive his sister is a l i v e_ —Lance stumbles back against the console, automatically hiding behind Hunk as Allura pushes past them all and activates the console and this is the first time Lance learns exactly how long it’s been since he fell asleep and _ten thousand years, he can’t even process that_ and he watches as Allura forces herself together, pushes down her grief and loss and pain and hides it.

She glances over them all, briefly, and he can see the briefest flash of loss in her eyes are she scans over him and he’s hurt, for a moment, that she doesn’t recognize him but then he remembers he still looks like a human and he’s grown, a little, since she last saw him (for her, it’s been barely a handful of days—for him it’s been five years, and he’s grown from her awkward kid brother to an awkward-almost adult, since he hasn’t hit adulthood and his growth hasn’t slowed, not yet), and he realizes she just thinks he looks like someone she used to love and he feels bad for her, and he wants to scream that it’s him, _it’s me it’s Lance it’s your little brother_ but his tongue is slow and heavy and he stays silent.

And then Shiro goes to introduce them all, and he can’t just _not let her know_.

Shiro says his name, and Allura’s eyes _flash_ with pain and Lance just reaches out and _grabs_ her sleeve and she sets her chin, about to reprimand him, but their eyes meet and he forces himself to let the illusion fade and as his cheek-marks come back and his eyes start to glow the same way hers do, the way humans’ don’t, she breathes and he sees her break.

“ _I’m here Allura it’s okay I’m here you’re here you’re alive—”_

_“Lance you’re alive you’re safe I thought you were—I thought—”_

The others might be confused, and he might need to explain it further, but right now, Lance has his _sister_ and even though he misses the family on Earth who took him in, he has the one he grew up with, who he’s been missing every day for the past five years like a missing limb, and he’s so relieved.

(He hates himself, a little, for this, because now Allura has to deal with the pain of knowing everyone was gone, too, but now he’s not alone and he’s so grateful, because he doesn’t know what he’d do, if he was here, home, without her.)

He’ll deal with the grief later. For right now, he and his sister sit on the floor, desperately holding each other. They have each other, and that makes everything worth it.


End file.
